Concepts of Race and Ethnicity Continued

(A picture from the Holocaust. Via http://www.mtholyoke.edu)

On the previous Sociology of Race and Ethnicity article, I talked about what 'race' is and how it is not real. I also discussed the concepts of racism and discrimination. For this article, I will continue on with the concepts from this subject.

Genocide is the systemic killing of one group of people by another group. This could be physical killing, like what the Nazis did to the Jewish community during World War II, or this could be cultural killing, like what the Europeans did (and are still doing) to the First Nations peoples (ex. Residential Schools). The main goal is to destroy the "other."

Assimilation occurs when minorities adopt the culture and patterns of the majority. An example of this would be immigrants learning to speak and write English when they come over to Canada, or learning about and adopting the culture. Sometimes, immigrants will fully assimilate. Full assimilation occurs when the minority fully adopts the majority's way of living -- from the way they dress to their eating habits to their religion. As a result, many minorities lose part of (or in some cases all of) their own ancestral heritage.

Segregation is the racist/discriminatory act of separating groups. An example of this would be Apartheid in South Africa from 1948 to 1994. During this time and under this policy, the native Africans were physically separated from the Afrikaans (White South Africans) and did not receive the same rights (politically, legally, economically) as their white counterparts.

This is where I will leave this article. If you have any questions or comments, you can share them in the comment section. You can also talk to me on Twitter at @EverythingSLGY or on Facebook at Everything Sociology.